12 responses to “The Last Ten Movies I Saw”

I’m curious to get your impressions of The Mother and The Whore. I’ve heard that it is either an enthralling Gallic talkfest or it is an excruciatingly boring Gallic talkfest. I do have fun watching J.P Leaud most of the time, though…………….Your thoughts

I’m firmly on the “enthralling” side of the debate. I actually showed it in my French New Wave class at Oakton Community College (all 3 and a half hours!) and am having my students analyze it as representing the “death” of the French New Wave. I think it’s one of Leaud’s two greatest performances (the other being in Rivette’s even longer OUT 1). Here’s the “proof,” btw, that I showed it in class: https://twitter.com/whitecitycinema/status/444310431197184000/photo/1

Now, all you have to do is show Celine and Julie Go Boating to your class and you will truly have ascended to the Cinema Pantheon. When the hell will we ever get a Region 1 DVD of this masterpiece. I mean, Criterion just put out a 5 disc set of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, for pity’s sake!

Also, I lost the info you sent me about your Region Free Blu Ray player. What’s the model, where did you get it and are you satisfied with it?

You’re right! I feel guilty about not showing any Rivette. I’m going to have to re-teach this class next year so I can fit him in. New Yorker Video has the rights to CELINE AND JULIE. Their website claims it’s coming to Blu-ray in “October 2013.” I emailed them and they said it would be out later this year. If it’s not out by next spring I’ll probably just break down and buy the BFI’s Region 2 DVD.

I got my region-free player fro World Import in Franklin Park. I got an LG but they have a wide variety of options:

I have seen numbers 1,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9. I have not seen numbers 2 and 10, but they must sound interesting. I would give The Howard Hawks documentary either * * * 1/2 or * * * * stars. Either way, I love it. I gave numbers 3,4,7 and 9 * * * * stars out of * * * * and I gave number 8
* * * 1/2 out of * * * * stars. I am also very well aware that number 8 is a Jacques Tati film that is in no way related to Stephen Soderbergh 2000 anti-drug drama. I gave numbers 5 and 6 * * * out of * * * * stars. Speaking of number 7, on my site http://www.cinematiccoffee.com I have a list of my favorite films by Preston Sturges, which is posted underneath my most recent entry which concerns my favorite Andrei Tarkovsky films. P.S. I do not know If you teach a class on Tuesday April 1, but If you do are you going to show (for fun) John Waters 1972 trash classic Pink Flamingos. 🙂 P.S. I use the word trash as a compliment:)

Great to hear from you, Ben. Why, yes, you can expect a GRAND BUDAPEST review soon. It’s going to be a short one because I’m busy doing a bunch of other stuff (including reviewing films for the Chicago Latino Film Festival) but I’ll probably have it up the week after next. I’m happy to report it’s my favorite Wes Anderson movie!

You should also see NYMPHOMANIAC VOL. 1, which I took a class to see on a field trip last night. Everyone loved it. In a weird way, it would make a great double feature with GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL. They’re both movies whose true subjects are storytelling itself.

Ha! Well, it’s similar in the sense that it features a bunch of interviews with an old director who had been forced into premature retirement circa 1970, interspersed with a bunch of clips from his films. On the other hand, the Hawks doc was made for T.V. and is only an hour long. It also only features interviews with Hawks and not with any of his collaborators. I prefer the Ford doc because it’s more exhaustive and feels more like a real movie since it was directed by a real filmmaker (Peter Bogdanovich). But I don’t think you can study either filmmaker enough: they’re both on the Mount Rushmore of American cinema. (BTW, you can find the Hawks doc on the Blu-ray of Rio Bravo, which, incidentally, also has an audio commentary by John Carpenter.)